Scary Israelis:
A lot of press was given to the poll results indicating that Americans had a negative view of Islam. Surprise, surprise. But I would not have thought any American left of a skin-head would have thought, much less said, what was in the following article that appeared in my in-box last week, courtesy of the "Truth Provider", Yuval Zalihouk:
Dear friends,It goes on and on like this, calling for a jihad against jihad. It is truly scary to think that the people talking like this think they are on our side.
Here is a must read article.
Recently I sent you the incredible interview on Al-Jazeera of Wafa Sultan, the most courageous Arab woman alive. I also sent you the defeatist text of one of Ehud Olmert's 'we are tired of fighting' speeches.
The question is, who among Israeli and Jewish commentators possesses the same amount of courage as Wafa Sultan, namely, the courage to ignore the popular hype and media sound-bites and state the less popular truth.
The answer is that there are the prominent few, but among the best of them I nominate Professor Paul Eidelberg for the prize. Yes, what he writes feels uncomfortable at times, but I challenge you to point to anything he says which is not true?
Your Truth Provider,
Yuval.
DEJA VU
PROF. PAUL EIDELBERG
Remember what was said about Yasser Arafat and the Fatah-led PLO at the end of the 1980s? Something like this: Once Arafat and the PLO are invested with the responsibility of providing services for the Arabs in the West bank and Gaza like collecting the garbage they will transcend their terrorist past and become 'moderates' (i.e., bourgeois). Israel will then have a negotiating partner for peace and for drawing the final borders of the state.
Well, we are hearing the same drivel today about Hamas. These bloody jihadists, having been voted into power by a large majority the poor-little-people, the Palestinians, will also morph into garbage inspectors, and thus become a negotiating partner for peace. Such are the glad tidings from Jews in Israel and America.
What an insult to Hamas! What prevents these benighted Jews from taking the killer-mentality savage acts of Hamas seriously? No, it's not merely a matter of denial. These deniers are moral cowards. Period! They haven't the guts to face and fight unmitigated evil, that is, to destroy the enemies not only of Israel, but of civilization.
All the blather about a Palestinian state, whether mouthed by Israelis such as Ehud Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Natan Sharansky, or by Americans such as Seymour D. Reich (president of the Israel Policy Forum) and Abraham Foxman (director of the Anti-Defamation League), betrays a deep-seated fear which prevents them from standing up and stating the obvious: The murderous hatred manifested by Hamas and exploding throughout the entire Arab-Islamic world can only be overcome by the use of overwhelming force.
Moussaoui Trial: Can you believe how badly DOJ has screwed up the Moussaoui trial? The thing was misbegotten from the start: the so-called 20th hijacker turned out to be a crackpot Al Queda wannabe whom even Al Queda didn't trust, who would plead guilty to anything and everything, and whose primary goal seems to have been to make himself a legend in his own mind: the more the government charged him with the better he liked it. It proved what a bad ass he was, even though the reality appears to have been that he was less competent and less dangerous that the shoe bomber. Desperate to convict someone of something in connection with 9/11, DOJ threw the kitchen sink at him only to find (to their considerable consternation and disappointment) that they still would not get their show trail because he was willing, even eager to plead guilty to everything. If they had charged him with kidnapping the Lindbergh baby, he'd have agreed so long as DOJ fashioned some connection with Al Queda. But wait, they say to themselves: there is still a chance. We can have a trial after all on the penalty phase by seeking the death penalty! "On what grounds," someone doubtless asked at some point. "Yeah, that a problem," comes the reply. "But how about this? We'll prove that, had he fessed up when we caught him, we would have prevented 9/11!" Does anyone, anywhere believe that?
Ask yourself: Why do we want to kill this guy? He has pled guilty to everything under the sun and is going to get a hard-time sentence that will violate the rule against perpetuities (lives in being plus 21 years). Yet the government in bound and determined that that isn't enough. He must DIE! Even though even DOJ now admits he had nothing to do with 9/11.
Four and 1/2 years later, the government is still flailing around trying to punish someone, anyone, for 9/11. The fact that the only person they have had nothing to do with that is a mere technicality. He's a bad guy who wanted to be part of that plot, so he must die. It's beyond sad. It's a farce.
Congress Raises The Debt Ceiling to $9 Trillion: That's more than $30,000 for every man, woman and child in America. The Toledo Blade published some comparisons today trying to convey the enormity of one trillion dollars. Multiply all of these by nine to get a sense of what the government is now allowed to borrow:
• If you spent a million dollars a day for a million days (2,739 years), you’d hit $1 trillion.The first two of these bullets ignore the interest problem. of course. At even a modest interest rate of 4%, you would actually have to spend about $110,000,000 per day to get rid of a trillion dollars in a million days. And that's only one trillion.
• To spend $1 trillion in the average American life span of 77 years, you’d have to be on a lifetime spending spree of about $35,580,857 every day from birth.
• President Ronald Reagan dramatized the size of $1 trillion as “a stack of $1,000 bills 67 miles high.”
• 454 dollar bills weigh a pound. A trillion dollars weighs 2.2 billion pounds.
ThatÂ’s over a million tons. An average-sized car weighs 2,500 pounds. A trillion dollars weighs the same as 880,000 cars.
Iraq, Iraq, Iraq: One of the reasons I have written so little recently is that it seems like there is noting to write about except Iraq and I have a hard time finding something new to say. It just seems to be the same-old, same-old. A couple of interesting tid-bits though:
In a moment of seeming introspection that is extraordinarily rare for this Administration, Condi Rice acknowledged that, while she personally thought it was the right decision, she recognizes that "the outcome, the judgment, of all of this needs to await history."
No such humility was evident in Bush's reissue of the National Security Staretgy, reaffirming, again, the pre-emption doctine that brought us Iraq.
USA Today (which, by the way, is actually becoming a pretty good newspaper for all of its glitz) had an editorial on this subject today that pretty much speaks for me. An excerpt:The Iraq invasion, far from being a success, provides a cautionary tale about just why strike-first needs to remain, as in the past, the final option. In Iraq, it vaulted to the top of the agenda. Key administration figures — notably Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld — had been itching for a war with Iraq long before 9/11. After the terror attacks, they asserted links between Saddam and al-Qaeda where there was none. Because the administration rushed into war without building alliances, few countries joined in.Yet, in the same issue of USA Today, there was a tantalizing article about progress being made in Iraq:
After three years of turmoil, Iraq stands on the brink of civil war. Al-Qaeda operatives who weren't in Iraq before have gone there to fight U.S. forces. Neighboring Iran is increasingly influential with Iraqi Shiites, compounding the nuclear threat Iran presents.
Worse, because of Iraq, the U.S. ability to use pre-emption in the future, when it might really be needed, is weakened. Most of the world sees the USA as a global bully and its intelligence as suspect. U.S. forces are overstretched. And getting backing for a new pre-emptive attack from a public made wary by the Iraq experience would be difficult. . . .
In Iraq, the Bush Doctrine has been much like that Wild West dictum: Shoot first, ask questions later. Now it's time to return pre-emption to its proper place in U.S. foreign policy: for use only when the threat is imminent, the intelligence is bulletproof, and the use of military action is the last resort, preferably with allies on board. Then make sure you have a plan for what to do next.Qaisar Mohammed Abed sat in his living room the other day watching former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's trial.I find it strangely encouraging that they are generating more electricity than before the war yet becuase of rampant consumerism and the economic possibilities of a budding capitalism, the shortages are actually worse. There is no greater force for peace and stability than an awakening of consumerism coupled with a realization that, if the violence could just be stopped, they could actually have the things they lust after.
As important as the trial is in demonstrating just how much Iraqi life has changed, it may have been just as telling that Abed was watching a broadcast on his new television set, picked up by his new satellite dish, from a new TV network with new media freedoms.
Abed, 38, says he enjoys the new sports and news programs — and he has plenty of time to watch them: He has no job. Interpreters such as him have become a prime target for insurgents.
“I can't even look for a job,” Abed says, “because if I find one, I may lose my life.”
Such is the paradox of Iraqi life three years after the U.S.-led invasion. Daily activities such as going to work remain difficult and dangerous, and gas lines are mile-long crushes of frustration that sometimes boil into gun-waving flare-ups. Yet many Iraqis smile at their new freedoms and are optimistic, though not necessarily confident, that the future will bring stability.
Consumerism and mass media are embraced with gusto. Iraqi's have snapped up satellite dishes, cellphones and cars and can choose from nearly 300 news publications, 91 radio stations and 44 TV stations.
However, if Iraqi private enterprise is racing into the 21st century, the country's basic services remain mired in the 1930s. Power outages are incessant as skyrocketing demand has far outstripped the slight increase in electricity production since 2003.
Abed understands this. There are five new air conditioners in the house he shares with five relatives.
Still, my darker side is evdienced in this note I sent to one of my nieces in response to a question about what would have to happen to avoid a civil war in Iraq:Truth be told, I don't know what to think. What would it take for there not to be a civil war? Well, there are three possibilities. The first is that the Iraqis develop a consensus that their identity as Iraqis is more important that their identity as Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, etc. If the consensus were strong enough (e.g. the way we think of ourselves as Americans first and Ohioans, Minnesotans, Swedes, Germans, Protestants, Catholics, etc. second) they might just come to the realization that the cost of maintaining that identity is to let go of 1300 years of sectarian hatred and grievance. The possibility seems so remote as to be delusional. However, it is the hope Bush et al says they have (although I kind of doubt that even they really believe that any more.)As all of this indicates, I am horribly conflcited on Iraq. I so want to believe there is a happy ending here that I am encouraged by the fact that Iraqis are buying satellite dishes and air conditioners. But I just cannot quite bring myself to belief that a happy ending is possible.
The seocnd is that thr prospect of civil war "scares" them into compromise. One could hope that they would look at the horrors of modern civil wars -- especiall those driven not by economic ideology (e.g Vietnam, Korea) but by religious and ethnic hatred (e.g Bosnia-Serbia-Kosovo, the Sudan, Rwanda and even Afghanistan) and recoil from the near certainty that a sectarian civil war in Iraq will almost inevtibaly have the same kinds of results. If they did, then maybe they would be so scared of the alternative that they would be willing to compromise. That is where the current Iraqi leadership (or much of it, anyway) is today and way down deep that possibility is probably the thing that allows Bush to still have hope. But while those sorts of fear-induced compromises might hold for a while, they are not durable. Without the consensus referred to above, they fall apart and the more radical and violent elements, who do not share that fear, eventually drive out (and very often kill) the moderates who initially cobbled together the compromise.
The third and (of the three) most likely way to avoid a civil war is for the powers surrounding Iraq - Syria, Iran and Turkey -- to divy up the country either explicitly (ala what the allies did to Germany after WWII) or implicitly by formation of spheres of influence. It is possible that breaking the country into client states e.g. the sunni west under the control of sunni Syria, the shiite south and east under the control of shiite Iran, and a mostly autonomous kurdish north surrounded by enemies on all sides (becuase Turkey is no friend of the kurds) would avoid a civil war. However, that would mean the end of Iraq as a separate state (perhaps not all that bad an idea since it was an artificial British-French creation to begin with). But in reality, the Syrians and Iranians are not likely to intervene diectly until after a civil war has gone on for a number of years, much like the Syrians went in to Lebanon to end the Lebanese civil war. So, while partition might be a way to end a civil war, it does not seems likely to be a way to prevent one.
In short, I can't really see any resonable way to prevent a civil war eventually. As long as there are significant numbers of American troops there, we might be able to delay it, or at least tamp it down to the level of violence we see today. But we are not going to be there very much longer, and once we leave, I would be very surprised in we didn't see al hell break lose pretty quickly. And, after a couple years of unimaginable violence and cuelty --think Hotel Rawanda if you have seen it -- one gorup probably will begin to dominate over the other. Since the Shiites are a large majority and since we, through our insistence on democracy have assured that they hold most of the levers of power in what little government there is there, the most likely prospect is that the Sunnis, with Iranian support, will dominate, will start something that looks like an ethnic cleansing of what is now central Iraq (Bagdhad and environs, which are very mixed) and will gradually begin to assert dominance over the entire country. At that point there will be two possibilities. Either the West will restarin both Syrai and Iran -- in which case the Sunnis will dominate a country wracked by a never sending civil war -- or the West will back awayfrom (or fail in the effort to) restrain Syrian and/or Iran, and Syria will intervene to prevent the genocide of the Iraqi sunnis and then Iran will intervene to protect its clientst (the Shiites) from Syria. At that point, Iraq will effectively cease to exist and Iran and Syria will come face to face. From the point of view of the Iraqis, of course, all of this is horrible. But from the standpoint of the West, it might not be so bad to have Syria and Iran locked in a death struggle over a never ending sectarian struggle that neither one can win but form which neither one can extract itself
How can we (or anyone) "help" Iraq (indeed the entire Arab world) to develop the "tolerance" that is requried to form a multi-ethnic society? I don't think we can. I do believe it will happen eventually, but it might well be hundreds of years. Compared to Judaism and even Christainity, Islam is a fairly young religion: 1300 years vs 2000 years vs 4000 years (or so). If you want to see where Judiasim and Christianty were at the same ages, look at medieval Europe (for Christianity) and the Book of Joshua (for Judaism). Neither looks a heck of a lot different that what we see today in the Arab world. In some sense, I am afraid we will just have to wait for them to kill enough of each other that they get tired and start to grow up. Our task in the meantime is to quarantine them, in much the same way that we worked (more or less successfully( o contain the Soviet Union for 50 or so years after WWII.
True believers! Yuck. It doesn't matter what the belief is. Anyone who believes his is the only right way and is willing to try to impose that belief on other s dangerous and should be treated as the rabid dog he is.
We Are A Lot Less Important Than We Think: Finally (at least for tonight), there is this, again from USA Today:
"The universe expanded rapidly — growing from the size of a marble to billions of light years across — within the first trillionth of a second after its cataclysmic birth, astrophysicists reported Thursday."
That's amazing enough. But what really blew my mind was this:
WMAP "is telling us that the universe is vastly bigger than we ever imagined — so big that we no longer have any reason to believe that our tiny patch of it is representative of the whole thing," said Stanford University physicist Leonard Susskind via e-mail.I find that strangely exhilerating. We are "the Who" without a Horton. We are responsible for ourselves.
"We, and all we can see, are at most a tiny dot in an unimaginably large sea of space and time," Susskind said.
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